Welcome to our community

Be a part of something great, join today!

Log in
  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

The Production/Postproduction Software You Can't Live Without

Data spec

Data spec

All I want for Christmas is decent deliverable standard for data.

The cost of HDCAM-SR or D5 decks is a joke for a small shop that isn't located close to big rental houses and DV100 (DVCPRO-HD) looks as bad or worse than ProRes.

I just want full raster 1080 by 1920 @24, 25 or 30fps (nominal), at a reasonable data rate (25-65 MB/sec) in a format that virtually any facility can deal with. Is that really too much to ask? SMPTE? Well I can hope :innocent:
 
Thanks Gavin,

CineForm Intermediate and CineForm 444 (and CineForm RAW) decoders are all free for individual usage. We have cross platform, the CineForm codec on the Mac goes gold in about a week. And we even have some film-out houses taking CineForm MOVs now, big example Laser Graphics. Of CineForm files themselves have started becoming a theater presentation format, as it is so much cheaper than DCI J2K.
 
IT me

IT me

Glad to hear that Cineform is going to be speaking Mac :w00t:

Putting theatrical aside for the moment lets talk TV distrib. My issue is more with generating deliverables on hard disk in a "standard" (relatively speaking) format that can be dealt with by the recipient with some reasonable expectation of success. HDCAM-SR and D-5 are plenty good enough for distributors who are about to commit MPEG-2 atrocities anyway, but I am trying to consign tape (and its insane costs) to the dustbins of history.

I frankly don't care if its Cineform, ProRes, etc it just needs to be as ubiquitous as PDF. In terms of quality the best option is probably some sort of master wrapper with metadata header that the client can transcode into whatever they like. The reader has to be free, downloadable and cross-platform.
 
Cineform for presentation

Cineform for presentation

David - is there a Cineform option that will let me drive a 1080P projector off my Mac lapper with better quality than DV100 (DVCPRO-HD) using the on-board hard drive? Can I get full raster with 4:2:2 color sourced from a single FW800 drive plugged into the lapper?

These may be silly questions but I think some yeses would be well received on this forum. I realize the video card on the lapper could limit the options.
 
I have to put a vote in for the Adobe CS3 suite. The integration is the best out there between apps. After Effects CS3 takes advantage of all your CPU cores to create an instant render farm. Encore is a powerful DVD authoring solution. Photoshop is Photoshop, Flash is Flash, Illustrator is Illustrator and Premiere Pro CS3 is actually competitive with Final Cut now. In fact, the audio support is probably better than FCP. I won't be surprised if Premiere takes off in the next few years as it continues to pull Photoshop users who haven't jumped to video yet to it.

I just hope RED's codec is supported.

Cineform Intervention begins:
Hey David - why don't you guys just sell your 2K 4:4:4 codec for $499 and get the game over with. You could own FCP and Premiere. 800,000 FCP users isn't enough for you guys? Apple's just gonna do 4:4:4 prorez before you know it and Adobe will do something similar. Or you could sell out to Adobe. Or RED. But you guys have too many products at too many price points for anyone to figure out what the hell you're doing. Make ONE great product and sell it to everyone. Stop the A.D.D.
Cineform Intervention ENDS

Just a thought. No charge. :-)
 
Third that. The names are highly confusing to me too. I think they should just have two simple, cross-platform options:

1. An expensive 2K+ option that competes with vastly-more-expensive high-end post / finishing / projection solutions (DCI J2K, D-5, HDCAM SR, to a certain extent DPX / Cineon files)

2. a cheap cross-platform, HD-only option which is targeted for lower-budget filmmakers. And either make that one cheap enough that my friends can buy it too, or give us a bunch of floating licenses with it. Cineform needs to build critical mass.

Also, none of the names sound better than the other. Is "Aspect" better than "Prospect"? I have no idea. At least with Sony, a bigger number usually = better camera ;) If Red had 6 options with names like "Red Aspect" and "Red Prospect" all supporting slightly different confusing variations on resolution, etc, I don't think they'd sell as many.

Anyway, just my 2c - it seems like a great product but the confusing, dense and difficult-to-understand website puts buyers off. They think "good grief, if they expect us to wade through all of this nonsense before buying something, I'll bet they'll expect us to read an over-dense manual too to make the stuff work..." and decide to go with a simpler, lower-quality solution instead.

I like the company, I like the technology. But I haven't bought any of their products for the above reasons (oh, and Mac compatibility, duh... I am a PC user but prefer a working dual-platform solution).

The other option is for them to bundle with Adobe, with Blackmagic Intensity or AJA cards, etc. That would be great too.

Bruce Allen
www.boacinema.com
 
I'll fourth it. Darn confusing product line, but great products. One medium priced codec as suggested by Joel, would be more attractive.

Three NAB's ago I was suggesting this, no dice... there must be a reason for the clutter from their POV...
 
I can't live without Commotion Pro 4.1. Too bad it is no longer being developed. The rotoscoping, painting, and supercloning tools are all excellent. Much better then After Effects, IMO. I also really like using Shake 4.1, but that too is EOL'd. :waaa:
 
Haha 5th Cineform naming ambiguity cleanup. That was in my first email to David a few months back. "I'm looking to.... which am I wanting?"

Way off topic:
Flameop did you just move to the UK from Canada?
 
Bruce Allen said:
Anyway, just my 2c - it seems like a great product but the confusing, dense and difficult-to-understand website puts buyers off.
Click to expand...

For sure. The site could use a makeover by an experienced Web designer.
 
Shake still amazes me sometimes. My business partner scanned some photos for a production, and somehow she managed to make each file something like a 2GB TIFF at 25000x15000 (yes, that's three zeroes). Twenty-five thousand frickin' pixels wide!

Fired up GraphicConverter, setup a batch to downres, and it chewed on it for a while, then choked - not enough system memory! Photoshop - same thing! I only have 2GB of RAM, which apparently was not enough after the system grabbed its chunk.

Shake? No problem - saw the whole folder of 2GB TIFFs as a sequence, and quickly spat out a bunch of reasonable sized versions. And it has a neat little node tree...

I hope when Apple releases Phenomenon they don't wreck the sparse, easy to use UI with a new, slick, "Apple" UI where you can't find anything (Motion and Compressor 3 - I'm looking at you, here).
 
im.thatoneguy said:
Haha 5th Cineform naming ambiguity cleanup. That was in my first email to David a few months back. "I'm looking to.... which am I wanting?"
Click to expand...

Right. Please sell one great Codec in 444 RGB and 422 YUV in all resolutions for one price and make it equally usable for both flavors. Additionally we need AJA and Blackmagic support. If that's all done I'll buy it.


For more information the HDCAM SR Cineform Shootout on David Newmans Blog is pretty entertaining: http://cineform.blogspot.com/

Hans
 
AngusChandler said:
I hope when Apple releases Phenomenon they don't wreck the sparse, easy to use UI with a new, slick, "Apple" UI where you can't find anything (Motion and Compressor 3 - I'm looking at you, here).
Click to expand...

Well, if they do, there's nothing stopping you from continuing to use Shake.
 
mdo said:
For sure. The site could use a makeover by an experienced Web designer.
Click to expand...

Anyone interested in providing a web site "makeover" in exchange for free software?

Hans said:
Please sell one great Codec in 444 RGB and 422 YUV in all resolutions for one price and make it equally usable for both flavors. Additionally we need AJA and Blackmagic support. If that's all done I'll buy it.
Click to expand...

NEO 2K is what you are looking for: 4:4:4 amd 4:2:2 and soon 4:4:4:4 compression, captures live from either AJA or Blackmagic cards.
 
AngusChandler said:
I hope when Apple releases Phenomenon they don't wreck the sparse, easy to use UI with a new, slick, "Apple" UI where you can't find anything (Motion and Compressor 3 - I'm looking at you, here).
Click to expand...

A.D.D. 101 - don't hide things. That's why the node based compositors are so cool for a lot of artists. Once you get over the basic concept it's really friendly to be able overview your shot and dig right into any part of it quickily.

Maybe doesn't make for the best brochure photo... but digging through After Effects layers and compositions to get to FX gets old. (It's still a killer app though. The timeline and twirlies make sense... just need nodes to pull it all together)
 
flameop said:
no bud :-/ Always been in UK:-/ why ?

s
Click to expand...

No reason at all. I just thought I remembered you back in the early REDuser/DVXuser days as being in toronto and saw UK in your sig. Maybe I'm thinking of someone else.

Edit: I think I must have been thinking of Boothba. Boothba, are you or were you in Toronto?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top